All Saints 2012 (John 11:32-44) “Did I not say to that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?”

The glory of God is humanity fully alive.

So wrote St. Irenaeus, a second century bishop of Lyons in the province of Gaul, modern day France.

Jesus taught that he had come to bring life, abundant life. Jesus did not come to impose rigid inflexible uncompromising religious law. He did not come as the voice of condemnation and conflict. He came to heal, to teach and to transform.

Many people reject Jesus as a result of personal misconceptions and institutional misapplications of the Bible. The Bible is a record of human experience. It is a book of observations. It is a library of books that comments on the human condition in the context of human behavior. And, it is a discernment of the only possible solution to the fatal flaw in human nature.

That fatal flaw is the real choice our species made and continues to endorse to separate from God. Moses, the prophets and the various chroniclers and historians who contributed their observations of human behavior all come to the same conclusion. Sin does not produce separation. Separation produces sin.

Law based religion cannot solve the problem. It may restrain evil for a time. Sadly, those who administer Law based religion are themselves part of the problem. The systems they devise to administer Law subverts the stated purpose of the Law. Moses, the prophets and the apostles all agree. The Law can restrain evil but the Law cannot make anyone righteous.

Those who reject the Law are lost outside the Law.

But, those who seek righteousness under the Law are still lost. They are lost under the Law.

What is the evidence for this teaching? Death.

If obedience to the Law could produce righteousness then the righteous would live. There would be an amazing incentive to live by the Law and under the Law. Only the unrighteous would die.

The world does not work that way. No matter how well or how poorly you may keep the Law you will still die.

BY all accounts, Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha were righteous according to the religious standards of the day. They were devout Pharisees who attended Sabbath services in the synagogue weekly. They offered sacrificial worship in the Temple at the appointed times. But, they were still lost. Unlike others of their generation, they understood they were lost. And, they rejoiced to have been found in Jesus.

Death is the evidence of human separation from God. Death was never part of our Heavenly Father’s plan and purpose for humanity. Death is the ultimate consequence of separation. God alone is the source of life. When Jesus came to visit Martha and Mary and Lazarus he came in the fullness of life. He came in the fullness of life because Jesus is life. All life in the universe and on this planet derives from the co-eternal Son.

In the gospel account Jesus weeps as he ponders the death of his friend Lazarus. He weeps for the tragedy of death. He weeps for the willful and sometimes spiteful human will to remain separate from God. He weeps for the pain and suffering of the family and community. He weeps for Lazarus who is dead and who He will summon back to life in this world of duality: of pleasure and pain, of joy and sorrow, of life and death.

Jesus is the one who balances and unifies all duality. The missing term in the equation of human experience is steadfast holy unconditional universal and sacrificial love. Love brought Jesus into the world. And, love brought Lazarus back from death.

It is important to understand that most people, even religious people, in Jesus’ day believed dead was dead. The dead no longer have any personal identity or awareness. Some people speculated that some shadowy after image might remain after the death of the body. If it did, it immediately descended into the underworld, Sheol.

No one in the ancient Mediterranean world believed any one would enter into Heaven after death. Heaven was the realm of the divine. Earth was the realm of humanity. Sheol was the realm of the demons of chaos and of whatever after image that remained of the dead.

Of course, Jesus knew that the living soul of a human being is both physical and spiritual. He knew Lazarus’ spirit rested in that place in Sheol called “Paradise” and “Abraham’s bosom.” Jesus heard the cry of the sisters and the community and chose to reunite spirit with body to raise Lazarus from the dead in a restored body. Jesus reversed the process of decay and separation to give Lazarus a new life

The family, friends and community rejoiced. Jesus wept. He wept because he knew that raising Lazarus was only a temporary solution. Until Jesus dealt with the problem of separation there would be no final solution to the tragedy of death.

In dying on the cross Jesus trapped death in his own body. As the co-eternal Son of God death had no power over Jesus. Death did not take Jesus. Jesus took death. He took it, transformed it and in his resurrection now offers to all people everywhere a new life and a new way of living. People still experience physical death. For those in Christ, death is not the final word. Those who are baptized in Christ are one with Christ and live with him forever.

Through Jesus, all people now have a choice. We can choose to reunite with the Father, through the Son by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. For those who make that choice death is now an open doorway to the beatific vision in Heaven.

All who are baptized in Christ are one with Christ. Where he is there we shall be at the moment of our physical death.

Some of the departed enter into the realm of the Church Triumphant in the company of Holy Mother Mary and the saints.

Some of the departed enter into the realm of the Church Expectant. Anglicans use the old word “Paradise” to describe this realm. The souls of the Church Expectant see Jesus face to face. They also recognize that they have so ordered their life in this world that they have unfinished business with Jesus in the next world.

From time to time people tell me they believe in ghosts. They normally tell me that they believe this because the ghost has unfinished business on earth and either can’t or won’t move on until that business is resolved. The Bible has a very different view. The Bible teaches that no one has unfinished business here on earth but virtually everyone has unfinished business with Jesus in Heaven.

Death ends our ties with this world. All contracts are nullified. Even the covenant of marriage ends with death. No departed soul has unfinished business here on earth. At the moment of death we are instantly in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ.

The unfinished business is the attachment we cultivate to separation from God. Some of us cultivate separation through attachment to belief, some through attachment to other people, some to attachment to material objects, and some through attachment to self-will. All of those attachments diminish our relationship with the Father, through the Son by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Those attachments are what the souls in the Church Expectant work on. That is the unfinished business we all carry in our souls into the next life. We can only resolve these matters by cultivating greater and deeper union with Christ.

Sadly, some souls reject the love of God in Christ in this world and the next. They await the final judgment in Sheol. No soul in Sheol can travel back to earth, as Jesus himself taught. No soul in the Real Presence of Jesus in Heaven has any desire to travel back to Earth.

The souls of the departed continue to pray for us and we can pray for them. We need not pray for their salvation. If they are in the Church Expectant they are with Jesus in Heaven. We can pray for their sanctification.

The souls in the Church Expectant still choose how they will grow in grace and transform in Divine love and holiness. We can pray they choose to embrace the love of God in Christ with passion and delight. We can pray they surrender their attachment to the deceits and distortions of this world. We can pray they offer their sins to be transformed back into virtue.

As we all grow at a different pace in this world so we all grow at a different pace in Paradise.

The souls of the Church Expectant pray for us to make wise choices here and now. Pre eminently, they pray we make the choice to make the three aspects of love our priority here and now. The three aspects of love are principles not laws. The principles are worship, service to others, and commitment to personal holiness.

The glory of God is humanity fully alive. Jesus did not restore life to Lazarus because he had unfinished business with his sisters, friends and community. He restored Lazarus to life so the greater good of humanity might be accomplished. Lazarus was for his generation the living proof of the reality of Divine Love that so many people in our generation demand.

Jesus raised Lazarus because he loved him. Because Jesus loved Lazarus he gave him the mission to proclaim that the power of God is life. The power of God is love. Most of those who saw Lazarus and heard him speak reacted with fear. Some did not believe. Some believed but wanted to kill Lazarus. Many simply refused to believe.

Jesus wept because he knew Lazarus would face this level of animosity, fear and unbelief.

For that generation in that place, Lazarus was the physical evidence of the glory of God. Some believed and rejoiced. Many feared and reacted from the place of pride and self-will.

Here at the altar of sacrifice God provides another witness to life and to love. In the blessed sacrament of the altar the three realms of the church meet in union with the Real Presence of the co-eternal Son.

It is here that the saints of the Church Triumphant, the souls of the Church Expectant and the people of the Church Militant meet in union with the Real Presence of the Living Lord Jesus Christ. It is here that we enter into holy communion with the very source of life. It is here that are most fully alive in the infinite and eternal love of the Triune God. It is here that Jesus now asks us to receive his words: “Did I not say to that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?”